I'm sure no one is intentionally implying that the guy killed last night was to blame for his fate. The facts are not known. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones.

On cycling, a bike + person probably weighs 14 stone on average. A car, made of hard metal, weighs over a ton. There is no room for even the slightest error for a driver looking to share road space with cyclists. As a cyclist myself, all too often, motorists open doors onto my path, overtake me at dangerous places, come far too close and generally show a reckless disregard for my safety. Are cyclists 100% well behaved all the time? No. But how many taxi drivers, truck drivers or bus drivers have been killed or seriously injured by cyclists in the last decade?

I realise it's frustrating for motorists to see cyclists gliding past and breaking red lights, but those same motorists walk through red lights when pedestrians. Push bikes don't reach speeds and lack weight to kill or seriously injure. This is a fact. So I'm on a bike at a red light where it's safe to proceed, I will do so. At my own risk. Partly to pull away from the angry traffic that can pull off when lights go green in a manner which makes it dangerous for me.

With such heavy oil dependency, bikes are the future of urban transport in our towns and cities. I just hope it gets safer.

There are morons driving cars and morons cycling bikes. The difference is that one has the protection of a large metal shell around the occupant; the other is completely exposed. Personal safety aside, there is a duty of care on cyclists to be "good citizens" of the roadway but there is actually a far higher duty on the motorist due to the imbalance in the respective probabilities of surviving a collision.

A key point is that, by and large, the roads and road laws are designed with motorists in mind and little else. Much of the time the effect is actually to make cycling more difficult and more unsafe.

Roadway examples:
- roadways being made narrower (good example of Patrick St above)
- cycle lanes that disappear without warning, forcing cyclists to either stop abruptly or go straight into moving traffic
- cycle lanes that have more craters than the moon, forcing cyclists to move onto the road for their own safety

With regard to laws, one illustration could be the frustration that drivers feel when they see a cyclist breaking the law by rolling through a red light, say on a left hand turn. A key to the success of cycling in an urban environment is the ability to maintain physical momentum. Getting up to travelling speed (however fast or slow that might be) requires far more effort than simply maintaining speed, with those first pedal strokes requiring the most effort by some distance. There are laws in place in other countries that allow for this fact, such as the concept of permitting "roll through", but not so in Ireland.

There will be less accidents involving cyclists when we have more cyclists (this is backed up by considerable research). We will have more cyclists when we overhaul the way we design our roads and laws to allow for all moving traffic, not just the automobile.

Push bikes don't reach speeds and lack weight to kill or seriously injure. This is a fact.

No, It's not.

Jason Howard, 36, was fined £2,200 yesterday after he was found guilty of dangerous cycling. He hit 17-year-old Rhiannon Bennett, who struck her head on the pavement as she fell and died of her injuries.

We could do with a thread that allows us to figure out what we can do to make cycling safer, whether as a motorist, a cyclist, a planner, an administrator, a law enforcer, or any combination of those.

Solely pointing to failings on the part of 'other people' will not solve this.

Fair enough. As someone who pays road tax, car insurance, health insurance and cycles I just get annoyed when all road users of one kind are branded as the same.

I've suggested some solutions numerous times.
They include:
-Helmets compulsory for all ages, there is no argument against this.
-Children under the age of 12 must be accompanied by an adult when biking on public roads.
-At 12 they must get a road users licence which includes lessons about rules of the road.
-They can then cycle on their own.
-The road users licence includes motorised categories so the 'driving licence' is just the next step. Now the same licence covers driving and cycling and points can be assigned for cycling infringements.
-Any driver who cycles will obey the rules.
-Anyone who doesn't drive will be aware that their ability to insure to do so in the short term will be hampered with points already on their licence from cycling infringements.
-Any cyclist with 12 points has to walk for a while.

Bikes wouldn't need a number plate and you'd be reliant on gardaí enforcing the rules by collaring people on the spot.

I'm a mountain biker in my spare time and take risks on the hills of Cork quite often but would not be someone who would put others at risk if at all possible.

The biggest reason why cycling is dangerous is the failings of cyclists.

can you back up any of your lazy sweeping statements with facts?
for example please provide a statistic which shows that cyclists are the biggest cause of their own deaths. every death is investigated so you should be able to.

The biggest reason why cycling is dangerous is the failings of cyclists.

Here you go:

While there is a public perception that cyclists are usually the cause of accidents between cars and bikes, an analysis of Toronto police collision reports shows otherwise: The most common type of crash in this study involved a motorist entering an intersection and either failing to stop properly or proceeding before it was safe to do so. The second most common crash type involved a motorist overtaking unsafely. The third involved a motorist opening a door onto an oncoming cyclist. The study concluded that cyclists are the cause of less than 10 per cent of bike-car accidents in this study.

The available evidence suggests that collisions have far more to do with aggressive driving than aggressive cycling.

I've lost count of the number of cyclists killed on Westmoreland street although it seems like has been while since the last fatality. The busiest streets in the city are incapable of being shared between all the road users. The Council should seek to have cyclists on separate sections of road or streets - they also need to ensure cyclists stay there.

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